5.  The applicant was born in 1958 and lives in Chişinău.
6.  The applicant is a shareholder in a private company (M.). On 20 July 1999 she and five other shareholders initiated court proceedings against a company (L.) which also held shares in M., asking for the annulment of a number of contracts and decisions adopted by the shareholders' association.
7.  On 10 January 2001 the Grigoriopol District Court allowed the claims made by the plaintiffs in part. No appeal was lodged and the judgment became final fifteen days later.
8.  The applicant sought enforcement of the judgment and claims that a number of measures were taken with a view to having it enforced.
9.  In a letter signed 30 November 2001 (but apparently lodged with the court on 6 December 2001) L. appealed against the judgment of 10 January 2001. L. claimed that it had not received a copy of the judgment until the middle of November. The representative for the applicant and the other five plaintiffs asked the court to reject the appeal as lodged out of time and argued that, in his opinion, L. had known about the judgment of 10 January 2001 since April 2001. He submitted, in particular, that on 25 May 2001 he had personally handed a copy of the judgment to L.'s president in the presence of all the shareholders.
10.  On 30 April 2002 the Chişinău Regional Court allowed L.'s appeal in part, without taking any decision in respect of the fifteen-day time-limit for lodging an appeal.
11.  In an appeal in cassation, the applicant emphasised L.'s failure to lodge its appeal within the time-limit set by law.
12.  On 11 July 2002 the Court of Appeal sent the case back to the Chişinău Regional Court for a decision on the payment of court fees.
13.  On 3 September 2002 the Chişinău Regional Court decided that the applicant and the other plaintiffs were to pay the court fees.
14.  On 28 January 2003 the Court of Appeal rejected the applicant's appeal in cassation and upheld the judgment of 30 April 2002.
15.  At the applicant's request, on 14 April 2003 the Deputy Prosecutor General lodged a request with the Supreme Court of Justice asking for the reopening of the case. One of the reasons given was that, in lodging its appeal on 6 December 2001, L. had missed the fifteen-day time-limit for lodging an appeal and had also failed to comply with the statutory requirement to apply to the court for a decision holding that the reasons for missing the time-limit were acceptable. Moreover, the Chişinău Regional Court had examined the case in the applicant's absence, depriving her of her procedural rights.
16.  On 4 June 2003 the Supreme Court of Justice granted the request and ordered a rehearing of the case by the Court of Appeal. It noted that L. had lodged its appeal on 6 December 2001, outside the time-limit for lodging appeals. The court also noted that the examination of the appeal in the absence of the applicant's representative had amounted to a failure to respect the rights of all the parties to the proceedings, “especially given that a new judgment was adopted”.
17.  On 24 September 2003 the Chişinău Court of Appeal rejected L.'s appeal against the judgment of 10 January 2001. The court found that L. had missed the fifteen-day time-limit for lodging an appeal. Even if L. had stated the truth when it declared, in its appeal, that it had not found out about the judgment of 10 January 2001 until the middle of November 2001, it should have lodged its appeal by the end of November, and not on 6 December 2001 as it had done. Moreover, no reasons had been adduced to convince the court that the time-limit had been missed for acceptable reasons.
18.  On 3 March 2004 the Supreme Court of Justice quashed the judgment of 24 September 2003 and ordered a rehearing, finding that the lower court had not taken the correct procedural decision in respect of its finding that the time-limit had been missed by L. The court also noted that under domestic law the fifteen-day time-limit started running – for parties not present when the court read out the judgment – from the date when a copy of the operative part of the judgment was served on the parties. There was no evidence in the case file that L. had been shown the contents of the judgment of 10 January 2001.
19.  On an unspecified date thereafter, L. lodged a request with the Court of Appeal for a decision considering as acceptable the reasons for missing the fifteen-day time-limit for lodging the appeal.
20.  On 17 June 2004 the Chişinău Court of Appeal granted that request, finding that there was no evidence that L. had seen the operative part of the judgment before November 2001. On the same day the court dismissed L.'s appeal and upheld the judgment of 10 January 2001. L. appealed.
21.  On 11 November 2004 the Supreme Court of Justice quashed the judgments of 10 January 2001 and 17 June 2004 and adopted a new judgment, allowing L.'s appeal and rejecting all of the applicant's claims.
22.  The court noted that the applicant was not present at the hearing but that she and the other participants had been properly summoned. The applicant claims that she never received a summons. The judgment of 11 November 2004 was final.